Balaam’s Teaching

Posted on March 22, 2025 by ehurst

In John’s Revelation, among the seven churches to which the Spirit of God has him write is Pergamum in chapter 2.

But I have a few things against you: You have some people there who follow the teaching of Balaam, who instructed Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel so that they would eat the food sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality.

He goes on to compare that with the teaching of Nicolaitans. We can only guess at the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, but we do know a thing or two about Balaam.

The primary narrative of his actions are in Numbers 22-24. The Hebrew name for his town is ambiguous, but a good guess is a city mentioned in Assyrian records as “Pitru” just a few miles from Carchemish, on one of the tributaries flowing into the Euphrates. The problem is that the name of the town itself can be taken to mean “diviniation”, so maybe Balaam was part of community that did such work. Still, we have nothing else that comes close.

A working map in your mind should be the Jordan River and the Dead Sea for the initial scene in Numbers. Israel had hiked way around Edom and Moab because God insisted He would not give them into the hand of Israel. However, He did not declare protection on Ammon, the nation that arose from Moab’s brother (the sons of Lot).

At this point, the Amorites had more or less seized some of Moab’s ancient lands on the northeastern shore of the Dead Sea. They moved in and occupied ruins and so forth, wedging themselves in between Moab and Ammon. If you recall, the name “Amorite” is rather like calling them “Gypsies” — not so much an ethnic identity, but a type of people who survived as raiders, reselling what they stole, and setting up shrines for ritual prostitution. Somehow, we also find that a portion of the Midianites lived in this area, and may have qualified for the term “Amorite”.

Thus, when Balak of Moab sees Israel down on the floor of the Jordan Valley east of the river, he is almost certainly standing near a shrine on some high peak overlooking the valley. He confers with the local Midianites and suggests they go in together on calling a diviner from up in Pethor. This is no quick journey, but took a couple of weeks minimum.

There is some back and forth and Balaam eventually gets permission from Jehovah to go, but then nearly gets executed by an angel. So, his onager gets to talk to him about the situation and he is fully aware he cannot branch off on his own, seeking his personal benefit.

We know that he fails to curse Israel, but blesses them. Then he prophesies of how other nations were doomed because Israel had come. The text says Balaam went home, but then we learn later he stopped to teach Balak and his friends how to mess with Israel, removing their covering and invoking God’s wrath. The next chapter of Numbers (25) we see the results of Balaam’s suggestions. The Moabites declare a festival and seduce some Israelites to join in pagan offerings and ritual sex.

We have the scene where Phinehas nails one couple to the ground with his spear. The plague would have most likely been some kind of venereal disease, since that would have been common among a people who made so much of ritual prostitution. You can imagine what this was such a threat to Israel, because most of those ancient venereal plagues were harder on men than women.

Jump forward a few chapters to 31 and we see God instruct Moses to mobilize against the Midianites who helped Moab, without attacking Moab. They wiped out that particular bunch of Midianites, which were probably only distant relatives of Moses’ father-in-law. In the process, the Israelites also executed Balaam.

We hear more about this in Psalms 106:28-31. The festival was in the name of Baal of Peor, at a shrine that may have been in disputed territory at the time. This is why the Midianites would have been a major sponsor, since it may been in their hands. Again in Micha 6:5, the prophet recounts how this all happened right before Israel crossed the Jordan, and they really needed all the purity and strength they could muster for the conquest.

Back to the opening reference to John’s Revelation: We get a picture of how a church could have an infestation of people claiming that it’s okay to eat food offered to idols and make use of ritual sex. While the ruins of that ancient city include temples to Zeus and Athena, there was also the one for Dionysus. You can imagine what a major temptation it was to join in the local festivals there.

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Sources of Truth

Posted on March 17, 2025 by ehurst

There’s a booklet length article on Zero Hedge that you will likely find boring: What If the America You Pledge Allegiance to Isn’t the One Running the Show?. It’s loaded with references to legislation and court cases, and some of them are frankly impertinent, if you ask me. I’m still reading through it. It’s the opening paragraphs that grabbed me:

What if the America you pledge allegiance to isn’t the one running the show? This investigation examines how America’s governance system fundamentally transformed since 1871 through a documented pattern of legal, financial, and administrative changes. The evidence reveals a gradual shift from constitutional principles toward corporate-style management structures — not through a single event, but through an accumulation of incremental changes spanning generations that have quietly restructured the relationship between citizens and government.

This analysis prioritizes primary sources, identifies patterns across multiple domains rather than isolated events, and examines timeline correlations — particularly noting how crises often preceded centralization initiatives. By examining primary sources including Congressional records, Treasury documents, Supreme Court decisions, and international agreements, we identify how:

  • Legal language and frameworks evolved from natural rights toward commercial principles
  • Financial sovereignty transferred incrementally from elected representatives to banking interests
  • Administrative systems increasingly mediated the relationship between citizens and government

This echoes what I wrote about Trump not being a politician at all, but a businessman running the US like a corporation. It’s all wholly consistent with the system of US government. It also explains how a technocracy not only could take over the country, but already has. The only real question is who gets to profit from the business.

This article seeks to stir up a renewed commitment to Enlightenment principles of government. A key passage:

In his 1887 essay “The Study of Administration”, Wilson explicitly advocated for a government run by “experts” insulated from public opinion: “The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics… Administrative questions are not political questions.” He argued directly that “The many have no business with the selection of technical administrators any more than they have with the selection of scientists.” These writings reveal Wilson’s profound belief in governance by unelected technical experts rather than democratic processes — a vision that laid the groundwork for the modern administrative state.

This philosophy of governance — creating a permanent administrative class operating independently of elected officials — marks a profound departure from the constitutional system established by the Founders. James Madison’s writings in the Federalist Papers explicitly warned against exactly this type of arrangement, where unelected officials would hold unchecked power over citizens. The relationship between Colonel House and Wilson point toward questions about the intentionality behind administrative systems developed during this period. As we’ll see later, this vision would eventually extend beyond domestic agencies to reshape global governance itself.

All true, but largely impertinent to our concerns. Some years ago on this blog I looked at a scholarly paper on the formation of the American bureaucracy. It was the birth of the “weebees”, the bureaucratic response to elected officials: “We be here when you come and we be here when you go.” The elected officials have virtually no real influence on the system. The linked article is simply a clear declaration of what we already know had happened.

What President Wilson lied about was the expertise, which turned out to be virtually non-existent from the start. The hive-mind appeals to the weakest candidates; real leaders and thinkers could not tolerate working in a bureaucracy. This is why our military is so hollow. The majority of the commanders are bureaucrats, not genuine warriors.

Trump has declared an intention of changing this. That part of his message is mere propaganda, a sales pitch. He remains a CEO, not a statesman by any means. The citizens will benefit from a portion of his agenda in the same way any business works better when you cut out the excess overhead. That is, it’s “better” if you think in terms of marketing strategy and consumers instead of governing people.

The biblical principle is to bloat any operation with those under your covering, within your domain. You are supposed to bless as many people as possible inside the operation, spreading the wealth across your household of faith. We should be glad to see the dismantling of systems that exclude the covenant lifestyle, but not so it can be replaced by a heartless and dehumanizing version that simply favors a competing team.

We don’t expect anything really good coming from all of this. It’s simply the routine changes in the background against which we project the gospel message. Under the globalist regime, we faced a broad hindrance of our message, in the sense that every step of the way we encountered friction and vague threats. That evaporated once Trump took office, pretty much connected to clobbering USAid. But we are starting to see in its place a harsh crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism. I’m waiting to see how that develops.

Our community does not support Palestinians, but we also don’t favor Israel. There are no good guys in that conflict; it’s just another mundane human war. If anything is going to bite us, it is our insistence that Modern Israel has zero claim on God’s favor. We remind everyone that Jews rejected the Covenant of Christ and refuse to accept that God ended their covenant on the Cross. They aren’t special at all, just another human nation, peculiar only in their cohesive spite for the rest of the world, and their long noted intent on ruling all of humanity. We don’t hate Jews; we simply don’t trust them because we know they hate us.

It’s possible that the political tension between pro-Palestine sentiments versus Zionism will keep them too busy to notice us. We will take advantage of this opening to press the Covenant message. We envision preparation for greater tribulation, making people stronger in faith through our message so they won’t need us. We aren’t creating a dependent audience, but building a divine empire of faith people who are themselves sources of truth.

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NT Doctrine — Conclusion

Posted on March 15, 2025 by ehurst

I’m not going to say that John’s Revelation doesn’t contain any doctrine, but that doctrine is not the purpose for writing it. It is prophecy in symbols, all reaching back to echo the symbols of the Old Testament. Its content does not fall under the purpose of this study.

Our purpose in this study was to show fairly concrete statements in Scripture that point out the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. Not so much in the particulars, but there is a clear continuity in assumptions and expectations of how God works and what He requires of us. The Scripture flatly states the Gentile believers are not bound under any particulars of the Law of Moses, but then references fundamental concepts of morality behind that law.

I have made my case. You can decide whether any of it matters.

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They Don’t Actually Do It

Posted on March 13, 2025 by ehurst

In Scripture, the vast majority of the time, the term “sinner” refers primarily to someone outside the Covenant. To be more specific, it can also refer to someone in the covenant family who has stepped outside the boundaries and have lost their covering. The concept of “sinner” is someone who doesn’t cooperate with God’s agenda for humanity, and thus belongs under Satan’s authority. This concept needs to stick deep in your soul.

America is not a covenant nation. It is an anti-covenant empire. To be “American” by definition excludes following Christ. It means clinging to a value system that excludes what Scripture demands, and includes a lot of things that make Satan smile.

If you get offended when trannies prance in public and spew blasphemy, then you really don’t understand. I’m not saying there is no reason to find it objectionable, but that America has no grounds for objecting to it. Making that filth illegal is un-American. Without the Covenant, it’s just a matter of personal fashion preference, clearly something fundamental to the American justice system.

By the same token, to genuinely embrace Christ’s teaching is illegal in the US.

Only under the Covenant can you take appropriate action against perversion. If you are part of a covenant community, you have standing to do what God requires: executing sexual perverts. Not those with temptations — we all have those. Rather, those who act on their perverted desires. Yes, I realize it is complicated by the reality of secular government and laws; I’m not suggesting you go out and start slaughtering perverts. If you did that, you’d never get done. You can’t buy that much ammunition. What I’m suggesting is that you understand where God draws the boundaries.

You should have total aplomb in the face of perverts on parade. Turn away, sure, but don’t react in any way that encourages them and gives them what they want. They want to offend; they want an shocked and angry reaction. They want the confrontation. It’s part of their perversion and hatred. Don’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they have succeeded. They are simply a part of the American landscape, something that is inherently perverted in the first place. What’s the difference between adultery, fornication and sodomy? It’s all sin; the majority of Americans do one or the other. It’s all perversion. You should not be surprised at anything perverts do. You cannot save America from the perverts. There are no boundaries except in the minds of the sheeple.

Don’t offer any visible reaction when sinners commit sin. We are hardly surprised when people get creative in seeking new ways to transgress imaginary barriers. Don’t be a part of the sheeple audience to whom they play. Don’t comment as if it is worth notice. God’s standards are not in the particulars, but in whether or not you submit to Him as Lord, something no American would ever do. They might claim it, but they don’t actually do it.

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Roles Rolled Away

Posted on March 11, 2025 by ehurst

God revealed Himself in the Bible. If you reject the testimony of Scripture, you reject God.

In the Bible, we learn that a covenant society is peaceful and stable. Everyone has a place, a mission in life, and they have no cause for doubting that mission. If you aren’t comfortable with the roles God has assigned, you can always appeal to Him. There are clear boundaries and priorities. If you don’t like His answer, you can leave in peace.

You are not free to demand fundamental changes. You may well have a mission to persuade folks to think a little differently about some things on some levels, but you are not permitted to attack the underlying revelation of God. He is the final Judge of all things.

Some of the things God has made clear are the roles assigned for males and females. If you leave the boundaries God has established, people lose track of who they are and how to live. Western society hasn’t simply lost track, but has rebelled. Western Civilization represents a truculent rejection of divine revelation, the Covenant in particular. Not just a rejection of the one covenant, but a rejection of the very concept of covenant.

Early in American history, we still had some vestige of traditional ideas about the roles of men and women. They weren’t good, but they did work well enough. Women always had a mission in the family, and men could eventually find a mission on their own. We’ve lost that. Women have hatefully trashed their roles, and have seized control of society and law to a large degree. Women at least believe they have a mission, so they can orient their existence, even if they are woefully misguided. They have stolen away the last little bit of frame of reference that men could use to discern their place in the world.

Men today have no sense of purpose. They are hard wired against almost everything women demand. This country is lost. A precious few men here and there gain some sense of purpose, but society as a whole has denied the root nature of manhood, so for a man to be seized by a sense of mission is an act of open rebellion.

To walk in Christ’s Covenant means declaring war on the American society, and to a great degree, against American government. You need not lift a finger to threaten the system; simply refusing to surrender makes you dangerous. The Covenant binds us to pray for His wrath to fall on sin.

Lord, start with me. Cleanse my sin first.

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NT Doctrine — Jude

Posted on March 8, 2025 by ehurst

John’s second and third letters are brief summaries of what he wrote in his first epistle, addressed to a couple of people noted for helping itinerant preachers take the gospel to new mission fields.

Chronology: Paul was executed in roughly 65-66 AD. Peter wrote his letters from Rome and was also executed a short time later. In 70 AD, a Jewish revolt in Jerusalem brought a swift Roman response that destroyed Herod’s Temple. Christians who fled that event largely gathered in and around Ephesus, turning it into the new hub of Christian religion. The other members of the original Twelve Disciples traveled far away or were executed, leaving John as the elder there in Ephesus. His letters were written around 85 AD. Jude wrote his letter some while before John’s to an unknown audience that was almost certainly dominated by Hebrew Christians. He identifies himself as James’ younger brother, which made him half-brother to the Christ he proclaimed as Lord.

We thus get a picture of how the heresies John faced developed during the early explosion of Christianity in Ephesus and the surrounding region. Jude’s focus is on the early Gnostics. Jude had rather written something else, but this cult was a serious threat to following Christ. He says they had infiltrated the community to which he writes.

They had twisted the gospel of grace into an excuse for libertine self-indulgence and denial of Christ. Jude’s first comment is that these men were predestined to damnation from the start, never part of the Elect. They will meet their doom, but Jude wants to give context as to why the churches must endure their presence for a time.

First example: We notice that Jude uses terminology that makes a lot of later western church folks a little uncomfortable because he cites Hebrew mystical imagery that was common during the Second Temple period and plugs in his Lord as the Messiah to which that theology pointed. Many English translations leave out the reference to Christ being present during the Exodus. It was not Jesus the man, but rather an earlier manifestation of God’s Word that appeared in the Exodus, leading the nation out of bondage. And this same Word of God was the standard of judgment that called for the destruction of those who rebelled against God’s order of things for leadership in the wilderness.

Second example: Jehovah’s elohim staff also rebelled and invaded the mortal realm, getting personally involved in mortal human existence. They were forced to remain in this realm in the Abyss as part of their punishment, until the Day of Judgment.

Third example: The men of Sodom and Gomorrah (along with three smaller cities nearby) transgressed the limits God had set for them and went all out, trying to engage in degrading ritual sex with angels. Their punishment was fire raining from the sky, turning the whole area into a smoking grave.

These Gnostics also transgressed the boundaries in the same way as the cultists of Sodom and Gomorrah did, rejecting the created order of authority, even to the point of cursing the elohim. Even the archangel Michael knew better than that, but spoke only in echoes of what God had already said. The Gnostics don’t even have a clue what they are talking about, but arrogantly transgress the boundaries. They rejected the place God made for them and wasted the gift of human faculties, living by brute animal instincts with no moral restraints. That kind of lifestyle carried its own doom sooner or later.

They had joined in the sins of Cain, and of Balaam, and the rebellion of Korah. It’s quite a challenge to describe the depth of depravity to which they had sunk, sneaking in to the church love feasts to selfishly gorge themselves. They boasted of powers and wisdom, but were like clouds without rain, trees without fruit, stinking foamy wild waves of the sea, and stars that moved out of constellations. God was saving up special wrath for them.

Jude refers to the oral lore about Enoch, who prophesied before the days of Noah that wrath was coming for all the people who embraced the lies of the rebellious elohim. These pre-Flood idiots even dared to insult God directly, complaining about how He would not let them sate their foul lusts. It’s the same sin the Gnostics were engaged in during Jude’s days. We would call them psychopaths.

Jesus had warned such people would appear after His Ascension, seeking to mislead the Elect and destroy the unity in churches. Jude recommends that his audience do the work of Christ, having mercy on those who struggled with their faith, teaching them to distrust the flesh and keep it under the discipline of the Spirit. This is how we carry out the Law of Christ.

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The Two Rituals

Posted on March 5, 2025 by ehurst

A couple more questions regarding religious practice for Kiln of the Soul.

We aren’t interested in sacraments. That concept arose long after the New Testament times. We do have two prominent ritual practices: communion and baptism.

Communion need not be confined to the elements consumed in the New Testament version of the Seder. Wheat bread and grape wine reflect what was commonly available in the Mediterranean Basin and the Middle East. Digging back into the Old Testament references, I sense that any type of grain locally available is fine, as long as it is baked without biological leavening. A chemical leavening agent is okay.

While fermenting the bread is forbidden, it is also not required for the drink. It can be any cultivated fruit crop, fermented or not. And since our American food production industry is so deceptive, I would not push for literally local sourced food for communion, only the type of stuff you know is cultivated in your area.

Here in the American Heartland, I could use the juice of apple, peach, pear, blackberry, strawberry, and a few others because they are all cultivated in Central Oklahoma where I live. I think we should prefer one fruit type, though, and not blended fruit drinks. And for bread, we could use wheat, barley, corn (maize), oats, rye, and a few others, but again, not mixing more than one type — and baked, not boiled or fried.

Use your imagination: cornbread (no wheat flour) and peach juice, or rye crackers and watermelon wine, etc.

Baptism is taken from the Hebrew mikveh. The original was a ritual bathing to signify a purity of allegiance to Jehovah. I reject the common liturgical notion that it symbolizes the Holy Spirit falling upon you. It’s a bath; whether by immersion or pouring, you get soaking wet all over the body. A sprinkling would not be enough under Moses, and it won’t do today.

While it might have been rather frequent in the Old Testament, it became a one-time event in the New Testament upon one’s initial submission to Christ as Lord. We are not a denomination; we don’t require that you pass through it again. On the other hand, if you sense in your own convictions that your previous ritual experience wasn’t fully valid, I’ll be glad to walk you through it again.

It is not at all necessary that you perform the ritual in the hands of clergy or anyone else. That wasn’t required in the Old Testament. There may be a lot of reasons one might want that attendance, but in all the cases I see in Scripture, it had more to do with the baptized person giving a testimony in favor of the teaching of the person calling to baptism. Having someone officiate isn’t of the essence of the ritual itself; having someone witness is.

You can make a ritual of many passages of life. Ordination is really simple, with praying and laying on hands. When I do weddings, I just consult with the bride and groom, but no ritual is required, only some kind of public witness that the two are married. Likewise, there is nothing special required for funerals. Hebrews had a cultural revulsion for cremation, but I don’t.

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Glorious Deal-maker

Posted on March 3, 2025 by ehurst

When God does not grant to me a vision of future things, I simply go back to my convictions and extrapolate from there. What He tells me I must do on the smaller scale often indicates something about what’s coming on the grander scale. Thus, I’m only guessing, but it’s not merely a matter of human intellect. I don’t trust my own brain that much.

My point is that what follows is a description of how I plan to face the future, the kind of concerns I expect to face in my gospel mission.

I’ve always felt that Trump was not a politician, but a CEO with media savvy. As POTUS, he operates like a CEO of the US. He does not have long term goals for foreign policy, per se, but intends to bring the US as a whole closer to profitability. He acts like a CEO hired to save the corporation. He will profit personally if he succeeds, so he is motivated, but that profit is not confined to mere monetary calculus.

This is why he seems to contradict himself on things like Ukraine. He was willing to make a deal on mining and protect it with troops, but not at the expense of catering to Zelensky’s nationalist demands. He doesn’t take those demands seriously at all. In other words, he wasn’t offering to protect Ukraine’s government, only to guard a profitable operation in minerals. I’m willing to bet his private negotiations with Putin include that kind of thinking. He’s making deals, not addressing political problems.

As the new CEO of the US, he has brought in a team of profitability experts to trim the fat in administrative overhead. Some operations cannot be made profitable and will be liquidated, while many others will be streamlined and automated. He hates bureaucratic entanglements. I believe he’s going to treat Congress like a collection of labor unions that he can’t get rid of. He’ll work with them when they are ready to help out, and fight them when they get in the way of profitability.

I believe he treats Israel the same way. That is, the Zionists in US politics are a very large force that he must keep on his side. It’s more like dealing with a corporation that is saddled with some legacy founder who won’t let go of operations, and still serves on the board of directors. I seriously doubt he gives a damn about Israel, but he’s playing the hand he’s dealt. He is willing to include Israel in his struggle to stabilize and prosper the US in corporate terms, so his proposals for Gaza and the West Bank were just a windsock to see if he can get traction and make a deal. He’s pretty serious about it because there’s no escape from that issue.

Thus, Trump is no part of a statesman, and has little patience with other politicians who aspire to be statesmen. But he does want to bring more core operations back into the house, so this passes for an industrial policy. I believe he’s very concerned about America’s economic vulnerability after having off-shored so much industry. Thus, his thinking appears to be not economics, but financing. He will treat foreign countries as financial competitors and sometimes partners, but always corporate customers. He is focused on making deals that will profit the US.

I’m convinced a lot of commentators miss this. They keep chattering away about the political and economic principles, but Trump pays little attention to those concerns. He has no religion, only a deal-maker’s passionate commitment to the American brand. For him, greatness is not creating a lasting legacy of statesmanlike vision, but making deals and building a viable business. He will seize the financial opportunities and has no problem with coworkers profiting personally. He wants Americans to be relatively wealthy because that’s how he defines his own success.

I believe he knows that the technocrats around him are his biggest threat; that’s the nature of the job. He keeps them close so he can exert however much control is possible.

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Again Missing the Point

Posted on March 2, 2025 by ehurst

Keep things in perspective.

It would be very easy to get riled up about the internal conflict of the federal government. Yes, millions of useless tax eaters are up in arms and actively resisting Trump’s overhaul of the system. I fully expect this to become bloody sooner or later. This is all part of our time of tribulation.

But if your feelings are strong about this conflict, then you don’t understand what matters. All of this is not a battle of good versus evil, of light versus darkness. It is just one evil replacing another. The USA has been an embarrassment to God from the beginning, vehemently rejecting divine revelation. This country has all of the moral corruption of Sodom and Gomorrah with the violent predatory behavior of Assyria. The US is easily the most wicked empire in human history.

The crew working with Trump is not going to roll that back; they are seeking even greater human misery. You thought an army of committed socialist bureaucrats were hard to handle? Our morally filthy federal bureaucracy will be replaced by a soulless AI. It’s only going to get worse. The time is long past for God to judge this country; the world has never before seen the depth of wrath God has saved up for us.

But instead of fire from the sky, the US will destroy itself. It won’t matter how much physical destruction of the infrastructure we see. The greatest destruction will be not so much rubble and dead bodies, but the collapse of the system that makes life worth living for the majority of the people. Those who have embraced the Covenant will never lose their reason for facing the challenges of the day, but we have never seen an empire whose people are so dependent on things that simply don’t matter in the first place. They will imagine that it is worse than death when all their idols go dark and silent.

If you don’t understand, just stop and consider what it is that the current generation must have to make it through their day. God will take that away. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth! It will be a tragicomedy; you won’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of course, I dramatize in order to draw attention away from false visions of apocalyptic destruction and help you see the real moral threats. These things will take time and you will need the full wisdom of the Holy Spirit in your hearts to understand how God is working. The fear mongering you can read in the alt-news is designed to sell survival supplies and so forth; it’s still the worship of Mammon. True prepping is more about sharpening your convictions and your understanding of how God works.

This is the curse, that we live in exciting times. Keep an eye on what matters to faith and covenant.

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NT Doctrine — 1 John 5

Posted on March 1, 2025 by ehurst

John’s schoolboy Greek grammar should be obvious, but people have debated for the past two millennia over what he says in this chapter. I take the position that the so-called “John’s comma” in verse 8 was not in the original letter. This refers to some added lines that don’t belong with the message, lines that showed up in the KJV based on very late manuscripts, but is clearly missing in the oldest copies we have of this letter.

John’s theme is still the distinction between those who carry the Presence of the Holy Spirit and those who do not. There is no way to reconcile the differences between those two groups. We should hardly be surprised that humans with the Holy Spirit believe in Christ as both man and God, while those without His Presence cannot possibly accept that truth. They will come up with all kinds of silly explanations for who Christ was and what He must have represented, never mind what first-hand witnesses like John could tell you.

The chapter break comes at the wrong place, splitting a paragraph. Thus, this chapter begins with John finishing his comments about how people led by the Spirit cannot avoid obeying Christ’s command that we should love each other as He loved us, something the various cults choked on. John says that if you love the Father — as many cult teachers claimed they did — then you cannot avoid loving His children. If you love the Father, you will obey the Son’s Law to love each other. It’s not a burdensome law like the Talmud; it’s entirely natural.

He’s talking about spiritual birth, the Presence of the Holy Spirit in your soul. If God is your Father in that sense, then you have escaped the authority of Satan, the god of this fallen world. He does not own you any longer because you aren’t rooted here; you are rooted in Eternity. We just happen to occupy a fleshly form for a limited time while we represent an invasive divine presence in his domain. Our commitment to Christ is how we overcome Satan’s efforts to bring us back under his power.

The people who have broken that curse will consistently proclaim that Jesus was both man and God. The fleshly nature cannot accept that truth. John was there for much of Jesus’ life since they were cousins. John was part of the same extended family as John the Baptist, too. While John probably did not witness the baptism in the Jordan (the reference to Jesus coming by water), he would have heard about it from multiple sources among his kinfolks alone. But John was there when Jesus died on the Cross, so he saw how Jesus came by blood.

And all of this is backed up by the voice of the Holy Spirit living in every person who comes to Christ. Thus, there are three witnesses: the water baptism in which the Father spoke bluntly Himself for all to hear, and blood on the Cross that shook the earth and darkened the sky, and the divine Presence of the Holy Spirit who would not have come into hearts in quite the same way without the Ascension. John believes.

And if you can swallow the testimony about the Voice of God at the baptism, and the testimony of miracles from hundreds at the Cross, then the voice of the Holy Spirit is greater still. Without His Presence, you could not make sense of the human testimonies. But with His Presence, you already have all the testimony you need, never mind whether you experienced those miraculous events yourself. God is naturally going to testify of Himself in your soul, but if you can’t embrace the truth of the Incarnation, then you are calling God Himself a liar.

Without the Spirit of the Risen Lord in your soul, you cannot claim to have eternal life.

Thus, John wrote this letter to reassure the fleshly minds of his readers that they do indeed have eternal life. Just listen for the Spirit’s witness. That Voice is the assurance you have to approach the Throne of God and make requests that He is eager to answer.

Something you should pray for is that any child of God who has gotten off the path, led astray by the lies of the cultists, would repent and return. There are limits of course. John has already specified what he means by “a sin leading to death” — denying that Jesus was the Son of God. If someone can go that far, they aren’t a child of God. Pray for them to get saved, if you feel led, but don’t pray like they are just a child of God who got off track. There are plenty of mistakes His children will make without denying Christ.

We know that those who are spiritually born are not going to make that kind of mistake. That’s what John means by saying the children of God don’t sin — that particular sin, of course. The Devil cannot reclaim your soul; the Lord forbids it. The Holy Spirit makes us aware that we belong to God, while the rest of the world belongs to Satan. The Spirit also makes us fully aware of who Christ is and that we belong to Him. All those cults are lies; they don’t know God and cannot embrace the Savior.

Finally, John says he wants his little darlings to be careful and avoid getting too close to idolatry.

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